Kuroneko wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 5:46 pm

John Bingham wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 11:58 am

CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:43 am

The church was built in 1917 by French colonials atop Bokor Mountain.

No it wasn't, nothing was built till after the road was made in the mid 20s.

Old Catholic Church

The Old Catholic Church was built by the French in the early 1920s as part of the French township on Bokor Mountain. The church’s interior is surprisingly well kept. http://www.sokhahotels.com/kampot/desti ... r-mountain

Bokor Mountain was found by the French in 1917 and developed into a resort in 1921. It was the famous summer escape for the French elites and royal family. https://www.sokhahotels.com/kampot/did-you-know/history

Sokha haven't really done their research. The road was only completed in 1921, and it took three more years to build the Bokor Palace Hotel, which was only officially opened on Valentine's Day 1925. It was advertised as a resort as early as 1921 in the Bangkok Times English edition, but there was nothing much up there yet. The port serving it was at Ream, quite some distance. The Bokor Palace Hotel is often called a casino, but it only had a casino on the premises for a very brief period in the early 60s.

The First Indochina War saw large bands of Viet Minh and sometimes allied Khmer Minh/Issaraks taking refuge in the Elephant Mountains, and the casino was torched by some "Black Dragon" bandits in 1949 and the resort was abandoned. It was only in the late 50s after independence that the place was refurbished and then officially reopened in 1962 as "Cité du Bokor", many of the building date from this period, such as the Hotel Sangkum and Hotel Kiri near the lake, which had casinos. The Mayor's office was also built at this time.


That's one of the hotel/casinos to the left of the mushroom cupola in Duncan's picture.

As for "The church’s interior is surprisingly well kept", I'm not sure what they mean. It's just concrete walls and a concrete altar in there, that used to be covered with obscene graffiti done by soldiers. It's also very small, I can't imagine they'd fit more than 30 people in there with benches. The vestry (back part) seems to take up about 1/3 of the floor plan. It's probably part of an effort to get weddings going up there.



Good article from 1997: http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/w ... r-mountain

pczz wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:06 pm

PSD-Kiwi wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 1:00 pm

Uuuurgh, they should leave it as is, maybe just clean up the shitty graffiti, draws more tourists in its present state than it ever will If it is refurbished...I don’t think many people bother to visit the the old casino anymore, lost its attraction once they started refurbishing it.

And talking of tourists how about fixing the ski lift. that would be a money spinner.

What ski lift? They were talking about putting in a cable lift around the time they started building the new road, but it seemed very ambitious given the distance from the base of the hill and never came to anything.

pczz wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 26, 2017 10:33 pm

Interesting. I was told by a local guide they had used the cable car to bring building materials up back when the French were still here.

I have never heard of any cable lift there. It's possible that small pulley systems were built along the route during construction, or even a light railcarts. As far as I can work out it was just hewn out of the jungle by convicts and adzes. A cable lift up from the plain past the escarpment to the plateau would be amazing, but even the best modern Swiss engineers would have problems figuring that one out, it's a huge distance through deep jungle with massive cliffs.

This is the only picture I can find of the church when it wasn't moldy and covered in orange lichen, and when it was:

willyhilly wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 27, 2017 3:28 am

I thought the graffiti was by tourists, not soldiers.

It's quite likely that there is more tourist graffiti by now.